United by womanhood

Aradhika Sharma

The story is of Sreelakshmi, the girl who ate a wasp to get sweet honey. She found the taste bitter and acrid. This is also the story of the lives of most women in the book. The fruits of desire are not always sweet, sometimes bitter, sometimes overwhelming and cloying. The taste of the much-craved-for honey turned out to be “sweet and heavy, and coated my tongue with the taste of the wasp, I thought I would gag and throw up, but I forced myself to swallow it. I never ate honey again.” 

Forever after, Sreelakshmi’s bold decisions are explained by the fact that she ate the wasp instead of allowing it to sting her — therefore, she is the trailblazer and the unvanquished. Until the time she commits suicide. The character of Sreelakshmi is influenced by the life of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi awardee, Malayalam poet and writer, Rajalakshmi, who ended her life at the age of 35, although seemingly, she had the perfect life. Intrigued by her motivations, Nair tries to re-imagine them through the life and death of Sreelakshmi.

Connected by the index-finger bone of Sreelakshmi — the writer, whose soul was trapped in the mortal remains of her finger, cut off from her burning body by her lover — the story moves from one woman to another. Like a baton that’s passed on in a relay race from one sprinter to another. The difference is that these women, who’ve come together for one reason or another at a resort on the banks of river Nila in Kerala, are not racing against anything external but the demons that chase them. Thanks to their life’s circumstances and sometimes, their own choices!

Many of them have come to a standstill, accepting their lives with resignation or courage. Many seethe within and a few have managed to escape. Yet, they live with pride, swallowing the acrid taste of the wasps in their lives. This could take many forms — the trauma of sexual abuse and molestation or the fear of being victimised by an online stalking or spine-chilling terrorist attacks by a person you know. This could also translate itself into acid attacks that are used as weapons of patriarchy, devastating love affairs, toxic relationships between sisters or the terrible consequences of sex that can threaten the very fabric of life. 

The 10 women in the book undergo the gamut of the female experiences in modern society, where freedom is available to them, but with conditions. Still, these women — Urvashi, Maya, Radha, Theresa, Liliana, Brinda, Najma and others — resolve to move on in life without succumbing to terror or disgrace. And without buckling under pressure! 

That Anita Nair is a gifted writer is undebatable. Her prose is almost poetic; her text full of imagery: “The speculation was as dense as the grief.”; “My love for you devoured most of me. What’s left, let death feast upon.”; “His heavy treacle voice that had once caused her entire body to turn into an erogenous zone, now made her shrivel up with disgust.”  

However, the feel of the book is heavy and lugubrious. The pluck of the women clinging to their identities shines through, but every life is a story of struggle, fear, pensiveness, regret: “Love fades. Love does, no matter what we believe. All that’s left are the what-ifs.”

The stories of the women are loosely bound by Sreelakshmi’s narration. They have no beginning, middle or end, but are mostly episodic and representational of women and their struggles for identity and freedom. Fighting unhappy circumstances, writing their own narratives, they emerge more fulfilled and at peace with themselves.